The Rise of Glenn Beck’s Bizarre Media Militia

Fox News is playing an increasingly erratic and dangerous game by embracing paranoid insurrection rhetoric and conspiracy theorists.

After a night of drinking, followed by an early-morning argument with his mother, with whom he shared a Pittsburgh apartment, 22-year-old Richard Poplawski put on a bulletproof vest, grabbed his guns, including an AK-47 rifle, and waited for the police to respond to the domestic-disturbance call his mother had placed.

When two officers arrived at the front door, Poplawski shot them both in the head, and then killed another officer who tried to rescue his colleagues.

In the wake of the bloodbath, we learned that Poplawski was something of a conspiracy nut who embraced dark, radical rhetoric about America. He was convinced the government wanted to take away his guns, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reported.

Specifically, Poplawski, one friend described it, feared “the Obama gun ban that’s on the way” and “didn’t like our rights being infringed upon.” (FYI, there is no Obama gun ban in the works.) The same friend said the shooter feared America was “going to see the end of our times.”

We learned that Poplawski hosted his own (failed) Internet radio show and that he visited the Web site of 9/11 conspiracy backer Alex Jones, who has been hyping the threat of a totalitarian world government for years. More recently, Jones has been warning listeners like Poplawski about The Obama Deception (that’s the name of Jones’ new documentary DVD) and how President Barack Obama is bound to destroy America.

Who’s Alex Jones? Even according to some conservative bloggers, the anti-government, anti-Obama talker is a “freak” who’s popular with “the tin-foil-hat crowd.” Like Poplawski, apparently.

Jones might be a “freak,” but he has recently been embraced — and mainstreamed — by Fox News as part of the news channel’s unprecedented drive to push radical propaganda warning of America’s democratic demise under the new president.

During a March 18 Webcast of FoxNews.com‘s proudly paranoid “Freedom Watch,” Andrew Napolitano introduced a segment about “what the government has done to take your liberty and your property away.” And with that, he welcomed onto the show “the one, the only, the great Alex Jones,” who began ranting about “exposing” the New World Order and the threat posed by an emerging “global government.”

Andrew Napolitano

“I appreciate what you’re exposing,” Napolitano assured his guest.

Waving around a copy of his Obama Deception, Jones warned Fox News Webcast viewers about Obama’s “agenda” for gun confiscation and the new president’s plan to “bring in total police-state control” to America.

Jones also noted with excitement that Fox News’ Glenn Beck had recently begun warning about the looming New World Order on his show, just like Jones had for years. “It is great!” cheered the conspiracist. (Like Jones, Beck recently warned viewers that the Second Amendment is under fire.) Concluding the interview, Fox News’ Napolitano announced “it’s absolutely been a pleasure” listening to Jones’ insights.

We don’t know if Poplawski tuned in to watch Jones’ star turn for Fox News last month. But is there any doubt that Fox News is playing an increasingly erratic and dangerous game by embracing the type of paranoid insurrection rhetoric that people like Poplawski are now acting on?

By stoking dark fears about the ominous ruins that await an Obama America, by ratcheting up irresponsible back-to-the-wall scenarios, Fox News has waded into a territory that no other news organization has ever dared to exploit.

What Fox News is now programming on a daily (unhinged) basis is unprecedented in the history of American television, especially in the form of Beck’s program. Night after night, week after week, Beck rails against the president while denouncing him or his actions, alternately, as Marxist, socialist or fascist.

He felt entirely comfortable pondering whether the federal government, under the auspices of FEMA, was building concentration camps to round up Americans in order to institute totalitarian rule. (It wasn’t until this week that Beck was finally able to “debunk” the FEMA conspiracy theory.) And that’s when Beck wasn’t gaming out bloody scenarios for the coming civil war against Obama-led tyranny. In just a few shorts months, Beck raced to the head of Fox News’ militia media movement.

Just prior to the Pittsburgh massacre, Beck’s often-bizarre on-air performances, in which his rants against the Obama administration’s dark forces were mixed in with his tearful proclamations of love of country, had turned him into a highly rated laughingstock.

“That is a shaky cat,” Dennis Miller recently giggled while describing Beck. MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough broke into hysterics after a montage of Beck’s most weepy moments. And TV satirists have had a field day at the Fox News host’s expense. (Stephen Colbert: “Crank up the crazy and rip off the knob!”)

But I’m not sure people should be laughing.

The consequences of Fox News’ doomsday programming now seem entirely predictable. As Jeffrey Jones, a professor of media and politics at Old Dominion University, recently explained to the New York Times in regard to Beck’s rhetoric, “People hear their values are under attack, and they get worried. It becomes an opportunity for them to stand up and do something.”

People like Poplawski? FYI, weeks before his shooting spree, Poplawski uploaded a video clip of Beck ominously referencing the FEMA camps on Fox News.

It’s true that Beck, in response to mounting criticism, made this statement on his show:

“Let me be clear on one thing. If someone tries to harm another person in the name of the Constitution or the truth behind 9/11 or anything else, they are just as dangerous and crazy as those people we don’t seem to recognize anymore — you know, the ones who kill in the name of Allah.”

But look at the very next two lines of his monologue: “There are enemies both foreign and domestic in America tonight. Call it fearmongering or call it the truth.” That doesn’t sound like Beck was backing away from his rhetorical call to arms to fend off the Marxist — no, wait — fascist, Obama administration.

And let’s drop the idea — pushed hard by Beck himself — that he’s simply a modern-day Howard Beale, from the classic film Network, just an angry, I’m-mad-as-hell everyman lashing out at the hypocrisies of our time. Nonsense.

Beale’s unvarnished on-air rants from Network targeted conformity, corporate conglomerates and the propaganda power of television. (“This tube,” he called it.) Beale’s attacks were not political or partisan. Beck, by contrast, unleashes his anger against, and whips up dark scenarios about, the new president of the United States. Big difference.

Here’s a sampling of what Beck has been drumming into the heads of viewers, a portion of whom likely (and logically) hear his rhetoric as a call to action.

That the government is a “heroin pusher using smiley-faced fascism to grow the nanny state.”

That it’s indoctrinating our children.

That we have “come to a very dangerous point in our country’s long, storied history.”

Beck is concerned that the “Big Brother” government will soon dictate what its citizens can eat, at what temperature their houses can be set and what kind of cars they’re allowed to drive.

Beck is sure “[d]epression and revolution” are what await America under Obama, and fears moving “towards a totalitarian state.” The country today sometimes reminds Beck of the early days of Adolf Hitler. Beck thinks that Obama, who has “surrounded himself by Marxists his whole life,” is now “addicting this country to heroin — the heroin that is government slavery.”

And it’s not just Beck. Appearing on Fox News, Dick Morris recently made a wildly irresponsible comment that looks even worse in light of the Pittsburgh law-enforcement slayings: “Those crazies in Montana who say, ‘We’re going to kill ATF agents because the U.N.’s going to take over’ — well, they’re beginning to have a case.”

And it’s not just Fox News. Radio nut Michael Savage recently claimed that “we have a naked Marxist for president.” And high-profile conservative blogger Erick Erickson contemplated the beating of politicians: “At what point do [people] get off the couch, march down to their state legislator’s house, pull him outside and beat him to a bloody pulp for being an idiot?”

Of course, the right-wingers at Free Republic are way ahead of Erickson as they fantasize about Obama’s assassination: “And let’s face it: all the speculation about Obama being the actual Antichrist will either be confirmed or denied if someone gets off a lucky shot at the SOB.”

‘Go Kill Liberals!’

I wonder if Beck knows who Jim Adkisson is? Adkisson made headlines on July 28, 2008, when he took his sawed-off 12-gauge shotgun into the Tennessee Valley Unitarian Universalist Church in Knoxville, Tenn., and, after whipping it out of a guitar case, opened fire on parishioners while a group of schoolchildren performed songs up by the altar. Adkisson killed two people and wounded several others.

Adkisson, a 58-year-old unemployed truck driver, brought 70 shotgun shells with him and assumed he’d keep killing until the police arrived on the scene and shot him dead as well. Instead, some members of the congregation were able to wrestle him to the ground and hold him for police.

When investigators went to Adkisson’s home in search of a motive, as well as evidence for the pending trial, they found copies of Savage’s Liberalism is a Mental Disorder, Let Freedom Ring by Sean Hannity, and The O’Reilly Factor, by Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly. They also came across what was supposed to have been Adkisson’s suicide note: a handwritten, four-page manifesto explaining his murderous actions.

The one-word answer for his deed? Hate. The three-word answer? He hated liberals.

The only way we can rid ourselves of this evil is kill them in the streets. Kill them where they gather. I’d like to encourage other like-minded people to do what I’ve done. If life ain’t worth living anymore, don’t just kill yourself. Do something for your Country before you go. Go Kill Liberals!

What Adkisson especially hated about liberals (“this cancer, this pestilence”) and what he hated about candidate “Osama Hussein Obama” was that they were marching America toward ruin: “Liberals are evil, they embrace the tenets of Karl Marx, they’re Marxist, socialist, communists.” Adkisson seethed over the way liberals were “trying to turn this country into a communist state” and couldn’t comprehend why they would “embrace Marxism.”

Sound familiar, Beck?

John Bohstedt was one of the church members who tackled Adkisson after the first round of gunfire began inside the sanctuary. Two months ago, Adkisson pleaded guilty to the murder charges and was sentenced to life in prison. At the hearing, Bohstedt told the Associated Press he didn’t think the killer had been insane, but rather had been manipulated by anti-liberal rhetoric.

“There are a lot of people who hate liberals, and if we stir that around in the pot and on the airwaves, eventually there will be people (like Adkisson) … who get infected by the violent rhetoric and put it into violent action,” Bohstedt said.

He remained worried about future violence: “Do you think there are other Jim Adkissons out there listening to hate speech? I do.”

Related

Seriously though. This is frightening. Stewart had it right. Perhaps there is serious confusion between the delusion of a tyranical Obama administration and being a loser. These gun-toting right wing gay-bashing born-agains are going to wake up in 20 years and realize they are on the wrong side of the history books. ;)

Oh my gosh, the person that published this is a disgrace. Beck is not a racist; he recently threw off a high-ranking executive of Acorn because the man proclaimed that Beck was scared of “black people.” No, he has also denied that Obama was Hitler, saying that it was ridiculous and radical.

jon… it was a link to a silly right-winger YouTube video against the closing of GBay (it’s a bit late for that I think)

Anyone that listens to Beck or anyone on in the Fox News organization is allowing themselves to be exposed to some serious propaganda. One might as well accept holy books as literal historical accounts if they are going to listen to that sort of propaganda.

A lot of hate against the right wing. It’s our right to disagree with our governent. But when the moderates and conservatives stand up, we are put down by being called racists, radicals, violent, gay bashers, and all that. Your just useing basic sociology to hush us up. Your all just close minded and hardheaded. There is so much hypocracy in the united states anymore it’s mind boggleing.

I’ll fight for what I belive in and be damned you try to stop me from excersizeing my human rights!

If you believe you are standing up for something its better that you know what you are standing for. Basic Sociology to hush you up? GTFO here! Do you really believe that the Obama admin is coming to take your guns?
Have you ever thought why right wingers are called “racists, radicals, violent, gay bashers, and all that”? Look at the conservatives that make it to the mainstream media. When you got idiots like Glenn Beck and Coulter representing you what do you expect?

I love it, when liberals stand up to the government they think is wrong it is patriotic, the right thing to do. When a conservative does the same thing they are crazy and sore losers. Hypocrisy, another word for liberals who don’t care one bit for their country, just themselves.

I liked Obama early in the primaries, even gave him money. But the more I listened, actually listened to what he said the more I knew this guy was way over his head and a phony. I would even settle for Hillary now as opposed to Obama. My only hope is that he does not do any permanent damage before he is booted out in 2012.

American Exile – many of us, many of the citizens of this country were in exile for the 8 long years of the Bush regime. You’ve now had 100 days of Obama. You’re now ready to disembark from the Obama ship. Besides being a fair-weather friend in rough seas, your buddy Bush has created a gigantic storm of Depression that the liberals now have to sail through (trying to stay with one metaphor here).

I don’t think hypocrisy is anything you can step away from so easily and so early, Am Ex, as you apparently loved the last 8 years so much that you can’t see all the damage that was already done.

Obama may very well be the most popular president since FDR – I know you thought he was hypocritical too.

So how many of the wild “Obama is taking our rights away” stories have been proven to be true? He wants stricter rules for gun control to KEEP THEM out of the hands of wackos like Adkisson, but gun nuts and FOX News watchers (one in the same) scream “He’s taking our guns away!!” Um, no he’s not. They jump to too many conclusions. Thus far Obama has not taken away a single American right, but Bush violated our right to privacy by wire tapping everyone, built a jail off American soil so he doesnt have to follow the rules of due process and lied to us so we could go to war under false pretenses. Yet Obama is the bad guy because he’s “probably gonna” do all of these bad, scary things. I’ll never understand how ‘Righties’ cry about how Obama “is gonna” take away this right and that right but have no problem with the rights that Bush DID take away and violate.

But the right wingers say it was for the safety of the country, so that makes it okay. We gotta keep brown people with guns from entering our country, but crazy white people in the country can stock up on as many shotgun shells and assault weapons as the want because we all know the founding fathers wanted Crazy Cletus to have assault weapons.

As a totally middle of the road moderate who reads and educates herself before she jumps onto anyone’s little radio talk show bandwagon, I must say I am in favor of some 2nd Amendment freedoms but your comment is spot-on and hilarious! Crazy Cletus!! LOL!!
We are former Marines and avid hunters, target shooters, etc…but no one has come to my house trying to wrestle my legal, registered weapons away. How silly!

I find it amazing that during the Bush years, the right wing considered any word against the establishment as terrorism or worse yet as unpatriotic, but now that they don’t have someone in power they’re calling to arms and trying to incite a revolution.

It’s no surprise that Glenn Beck is the worst of all, not even a year ago he declared that any support of Ron Paul was a terrorist and yet now counts them as his bretheren, he routinely creates a lie through asking questions (and I am sure we’ve all run into the “1990” reply to this method of reporting).

The truth of the matter is that many of these right-wing protesters do not even know what they are so angry about, many of those protesting Obama’s appointing Czars are unaware of simple facts such as that there were more Czars appointed under Bush than any other president, but then people like Beck get them so wrapped up in Obama being a secret communist that they jump from “Czar” to “Comrade Obama wants to destroy America!”

Well America, if you want to be the greatest nation on the planet you need to be educated, this does not mean simply “getting a degree” it means learning the difference between a socialist and a facist, it means knowing that the only thing you have to fear is the way your media is trying to control you and ultimately that anyone who wants support without explaining things to you, isgoing to be lying.

In the last election you traded freedom for security and now you have a chance to make a change, you’re too busy fighting within yourselfs, what a world.

People who think it can not happen here are under a myth that is fantacy and as for your fema camps ask truck drivers that have taken new furniture to “closed?” bases and these fema camps. Good luck when you miss the signs before your very eyes. when you laugh at this stuff and it happens you will lie and say why didn’t you tell us.

You’ve got people “on the left” and people “on the right” tearing each other apart with insane conspiracy theories and hatred. Grouping everyone all together based on the actions of a few, then fighting and arguing.

Meanwhile half the population doesn’t care and loses all faith and interest and the country falls apart.

Want to know what is “killing our America”? Want to know what really fucked up in the Bush administration and is going to now do the same to Obama?

Well it’s the fucking idiots. People who think opinion is spelled “F-A-C-T” and get angry, violent and dangerous when their values are questioned, thus going mad themselves and pushing decent people away from politics. This tear is destroying the nation, making more and more and more of the population either closedminded, dangerous of lazy.

Then wars start, jobs die, people lose their minds and everyone points at each other and goes “THEM THEM THEM THEM THEM!” for blame while dreaming of their reward for being the “right” side.

Want to make this country “better” again? Fellow man? Then stop getting so damn violent, actually learn as much as possible, live your life, be a good kind person who does practical logical things.

All these arrogance and childish drama has done more damage to the WORLD than any politician in all known history

I don’t know if what fucked up the Bush administration will ever be the same thing that will fuck up Obama. What fucked up the Bush admin was Bush himself.
The media was very friendly to Bush at least for his first term and a half despite all of his fuck-ups. His fuck-ups were never questioned until they amounted to too many fuck-ups.
The Obama admin on the other hand is taking harsh criticism from the right wingers who are opposed to health care reform, or any kind of change at all. ReedBashir do you think the health care system needs to be reformed? If you do. What is the best way to reform it? I don’t completely agree with the Obama admin in this matter. However, I do acknowledge that change needs to happen. The Obama admin is trying too hard to be bi partisan that they forgot about the ones who put him in charge (the blue collar worker, the unions, the single parents, middle class America).
BTW what is it that I did or say that was so damn violent? I have learned as much as I can and continue to do so. That’s why I get mad when you got goofballs on TV distorting the truth claiming to be “fair and balanced”. My duty is to expose their ignorance and prove that they are wrong.

I think that Glenn would love that had you would find your ignorance and you would find what is really happening in the world. I hope that you have the same feelings for cnn and nbc and all the rest of the news channels. i like your efforts towards this i hope that you find out who is right and wrong.

Well said, ReedBashir. We all have to live in this world together. Why not make it a peaceful existence while we’re all here? There’s enough hatred toward Americans from the people of other countries who are just waiting for us to destroy ourselves already. What we really should be concerned about is developing a united front against terrorism instead of stirring up hatred toward our fellow Americans. We’re all in this shit together. Do we really want to go back to a divided America like the Civil War era? I think not.

In my opinion, Beck is on a power trip, just sitting back and watching how much shit he can stir up. He reminds me of Oral Roberts back in the ’80s when Roberts said God was going to take him if he didn’t raise $2 million, and people believed that tripe and sent in their hard-earned money! Everything that the likes of Beck, O’Reilly, and Limbaugh spout is not gospel or fact. I see it as nothing but irresponsible journalism when the sole purpose is not to educate but to play with people’s emotions, especially in tough times as these.

So…. What we’re saying here is that for Glenn Beck to be against Communist, Socialist, Progressive movements within our government makes him responsible for creating looneys with guns that kill people?

Even if someone named Glenn Beck specifically as their inspiration for bombing a building, it no more makes Glenn Beck responsible for that person’s actions than it would for someone doing the same thing claiming they were doing so inspired by President Obama. Glenn Beck is a man that has a method of stating a political fact, then describing his opinion of that fact, then showing why he has that opinion of that fact.

People on the left and on the right need to take a step back. People like Beck may have polar opposite views of the people on the left, however, he isn’t encouraging people with similar views to his own to go out and kill leftists. Same thing with the right. Obama and Pelosi aren’t telling people to put right-wingers in concentration camps. The voices on both sides need to be heard. The next step toward extremism in either direction is to silence all opposing points of view.

STOP THIS GARBAGE! Oppose a person’s point of view, but don’t put an opinionated commentator on the level of some nutt-job that fried his last brain cell and went off the deep end. Facists.

Glenn Beck and unnamed conservative elements within the Republican Party deny their influence on the most extreme fringe nutjobs in this country, but their influence is undeniable. Mr. Beck has a habit of stating opinion as fact, as there are just as many sources for information that dispute the evidence he presents on his show. Trying to explain this to you, Freedom First, is pointless, due to your unnecessary (and misspelled) derogatory statement to end your comment. If you were going for fascists, you spelled it wrong, and I think you’d find it very difficult to peg the writers and readers of this blog as fascists. If you were going for facists, then you might want to go comment on a photography blog or something.

Dear Readers: You should know that this post remains one of our most popular ones; day after day, it’s the in the top 2 or 3. Many of its visitors are after the image of Glenn Beck saying “burn Cali, burn” – yet the discussion in the comments section is on-going, lively and very intelligent. Check it out.

Left-Wing and Right-Wing politics are NOT about who is right and who is wrong – though people make it that way. Republicans and Democrats view and subsequently solve problems in the method of their choosing – or, at least, that’s what they’re supposed to do. Unfortunately, all we are left with are horrendous remarks on both sides, followed by fear- and hate-mongering. Enough is enough – everyone has their own agenda, nobody really does anything if they’re not gaining SOMETHING out of it – but while some people may have valid points, Glenn Beck continues to spout fire built purely on hatred and spite. His remarks are getting crazier and crazier – if he wants to make a valid point, he is going about it the wrong way. In the end, if there is some kind of revolt or if someone gets assassinated, what will his remarks be then? “Hallelujah!” or “The American people have spoken!” … I sincerely hope not. Anger and fear is used only to control people – not help them.

Question: Why is it okay for the liberals to call conservatives all kind of names or use derogatory remarks when they, conservatives, disagree with the liberals, but it is so much worse if conservatives call liberals nasty names or use derogatory remarks? All those in the government, whether in Wash., D.C. or state government, are suppose to be working for us the people. Our Declaration of Independence states,
“That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed,”and –“That whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these end, it is the RIGHT (my emphasis) of the people to ALTER (my emphasis) or ABOLISH (my emphasis) it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on principles and organzing its powers in such form,as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed will dictate that Governments long established SHOULD NOT BE CHANGED FOR LIGHT AND TRANSIENT CAUSES; (my emphasis).
Our government is suppose to be of the people, for the people and by the people. If those elected don’t or won’t do their jobs, they should be “booted” out. If they can’t or wont’t “walk the walk” they shouldn’t “talk the talk”.This refers to both parties.
Name calling or derogatory remarks by either is unnecessary whether by those in government or those not in government.

I sense a group divided somewhat between Republicans and Democrats, though I am sure there are some here not glued to a party. First, if our Congressmen were dedicated to the well being of all Americans the following would necessarily occur. All Congressmen would use the same health care system they obligate upon the American people. They don’t; though there is a Senator in Louisiana that believes they should.

Instead of this government intrusion upon private enterprise our Government could accomplish the same thing without putting the burden of increasing taxes up the American people. First, they could pass laws that do not exclude integrative medicine. Instead of legislating insurance companies rates they could simply apply the Constitution wherein integrative medicine may be insured. Second, the government could deregulate the requirements thereby reducing the costs of getting new drugs on the market. Third, they could apply the constitution to reduce the AMA from claiming that only American technology may be used to cure or treat disease. More than half of the money spent on bringing US drugs to the market can be eliminated without infringing on constitutional rights. But the profits of the drug companies would be greatly reduced.

Instead this present administration poses itself as though it really cares for the poor who cannot afford health care. And yet some continue to believe this is the purpose of this administration. The money used to bail out the millionaires, the billionaires, oh good grief, even the trillionair Corporations. Now, how did the bailout of the rich signify their great care for the common American? Even when we consider GM how many common Americans make $800.00 a day? How many on this list understand that the bail out money used for the rich; yes that alone would have paid for the health care overhaul. I am for some health care change; but this plan is nothing but an excuse for government takeover. I want the best for everyone on this list. I do not believe the Democrats have the answer, and I don’t believe the Republican Party gives a hoot for the American People. I am looking at the Libertarians, an I am leaning toward Ron Paul and anyone who in general approaches Politics the way he does.

Hey I totally agree with you Gary Smith. We need more people like you and CJ. Legislators amd the white house need to remember they serve us, not big corporations and unions that try and buy them. We need men of principle running the country not corrupt slave masters. It feels as though they are just writing bills out of thin air and then forcing us to pick up the tab with out any real benefit to us(TARP, auto bailouts). We need to have strict laws in place for campaign contributions from corporations and other wealthy organizations that attempt to buy people to continually allow them to cheat the system and write favorable legislation for them.

For a long time now, I’ve been stating the obvious. Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, Michael Savage, and the rest of these ass-clowns must be rounded up and arrested. No, I am not attacking free speech, despite what teabagging repugnicans are bound to say. There’s this criminal act that these unschooled hillbillies would have heard of, had they gone past the third grade, it’s called sedition. It’s only a step down from treason, and it’s a felony! There is nothing in the Second Amendment that allows seditious speech to be uttered publicly. When that speech turns people against the laws and government of the United States, then that speech becomes treason. That’s a death sentence in this country, as it should be.

Therefore, what I am saying, in plain English, is that Beck and the rest of these TRAITORS should be rounded up, prosecuted according to the laws of the United States of America, which they pretend to love so much, but we know that they mean the “United White States of Amerikkka”, and they should be executed immediately upon conviction. Perhaps televising it for all of the damned racist teabaggers would help drive the point home…

As for these teabagging groups, hate speech is FINALLY a prosecutable crime in this country. Instead of whining about these vermin online, let’s do something about it! CALL YOUR LEGISLATORS AND DEMAND ACTION, NOW!!!! Those of you who just sit and type away but who refuse to pick up your phone should be ashamed of yourselves! Obviously, we have a cancer in this country, and that cancer is this neocon nazi crap that’s infesting our airwaves and then regurgitated in these sheetless Klan rallies that they call a “tea party”. It’s time for America to get off of its collective ass and stand up for what is right (not right-wing).

The political spectrum is just that – a spectrum of colours and hues. It suits the real hard line right wing to keep the divisions sharp, not least because they can then pretend that the labels racist/homophobic/whatever are also being levelled at the moderate right. Which undermines anyaccusations they (justifiably) face and also means the moderate right gets pushed further away from the centre.

Perhaps everyone needs to start using a couple of new labels, so that those conservatives who do retain their honour and honesty aren’t tarred with the same brush as the nasty end. I’d suggest (with very careful thought as to the implications) the moderate right, and the far right.

If it looks like a duck, and it quacks like a duck then let’s call it a duck.

It needs saying; there is a Far Right in American politics. It is growing in power, and growing in confidence. And it is as much the moderate right’s problem as anyone’s. So the moderate right, the decent Republicans the decent conservatives want to think about how much they’d like to be associated with a Far Right.

Because maybe if we call it what it is, then people will remember the LAST time there was a Far Right in power in a major world nation. Does anyone need the reference for that one?

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